BTC 2006 : November 7 – 8 – 9
Report by Maarten Vanneste

It’s the second Time the MSI takes part in BTC. Before that marten did participate with Abbit twice.

In 2005 we had last minute free space which we gave to potential members at €100.

This year, 2006, we were given space at a sponsored rate and we offered it to members at € 650/ participant. The invitation was sent out on 6 October 2006, which is too late. So we ended up with only two participants, Abbit and Spotme. Up for improvement in 2007.

The stand was well organised with a locker and furniture and we thank BTC for that. In 2005 the location on the 3rd floor was not so convenient. But this year, we had a very good location close to the entrance. At some moments visitors were cueing to get information.

 The one connection that was ordered by BTC for us could just do one PC so we ordered an additional one on site for an additional €205.

The day before the exhibition Ilse ordered a table for the member brochures. One table is okay, but not really enough.

Traffic

The tradeshow did well; especially day one and even better on day two. Only the last day, which was only a half day, was very calm. On the 7th we gathered about 30 business cards amongst both participants and the 8th we went over 40. Both Spotme and Abbit have enough concrete requests to be certain about a number of offers after follow-up and potential business as a result.

Distributed

Member lists                     50

MSI introduction                20

MSI Matrix                        3

Registration forms             3

MSI for trade shows           2

Brochures

ABBIT                                 30 (all gone at noon on day 2)

SPOTME                          100 (the new version of Spot me clearly scores well with the audience)

Optionfinder                         3

Crystal Interactive                9 (the last one was taped onto the table)

Informa                               1

Creator International             5 (all distributed, but we started with only 5 since we did not have any more left with MSI)

nTag                                   7

Conference Publishers         1

Swisscom Eurospot             1

GroupVision                        9 (the last one was taped onto the table)

Sossoon                             5

Eveni AG                            3

Turningpoint Solutions         3

EZ-Eventsuite                     4

Teknocongress                 15 (Allan Pini brought his brand new Italian brochures to the MSI stand)

The Mission Group             5

Synthetron                         7

Shock Logic                       3

DMD Associates                3

Staging Optics                  9 (the last one was taped onto the table)

Both Maarten and Sam explained the MSI concept and showed all brochures to all visitors. Visitors decided themselves if and which brochure they take.

Sam Smith from Spotme at the table of the member brochures with a visitor explaining about all members. He did a great job in representing the Meeting Support Institute. Thank you for that, Sam.

Elling Hamso (board MSI) was there as a speaker and he visited the Meeting Support Institute stand a few times.

Allan Pinni (member) was present on another stand.

We planned to have our own dinner but ended up at the MPI evening with buffet by invitation thanks to Allan Pini. Also thank you MPI Italy.

For the second evening Sam and marten received an invitation from Convegni Italian Magazine. The dinner took place on the evening of the 8th in a beautiful palace. We shared the table with a group of people from Bedouck and the cvb form the Czech republic and Prague.